MIT's Changing Places group helps transform your gym into a bedroom

This article was taken from the November 2012 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by <span class="s1">subscribing online.

You can trick out your flat with all sorts of furnishings, but the structure itself isn't particularly customisable. Until now, that is. The Media Lab's Changing Places group wants to personalise your home according to design preferences or even the time of day. The group's Home Genome Project breaks down a flat into a set of building blocks (such as the components of a kitchen and living room) or "genes" which can be combined in different ways. Then a design recommendation engine, based on proprietary algorithms, matches customer profiles to complete designs, allowing what it calls "mass customisation".

Not radical enough? Then try the CityHome -- a reconfigurable apartment. "It's space on demand," says Changing Places student Hasier Larrea. Living rooms transform into dinner-party spaces, or a bedroom becomes a home gym: Larrea claims that it can make the living space of a 78-metre-square home three times bigger. The project relies on moving, transformable walls.

Advertisement

Larrea has built a prototype moving wall and says the real thing isn't too far off: "The technologies are here. We're just at an early stage." It gives a whole new meaning to moving house.